Justice Guild Cutaway: Skyman- The Peoples Champion
Apr 25, 2022 23:52:51 GMT
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Post by redsycorax on Apr 25, 2022 23:52:51 GMT
Before Earth-109 experienced its devastating nuclear war as the Cuban missile crisis was thrown out of control and escalated into mutual assured destruction in October 1962, several new emergent metahumans arose. Tragically, their lives were often cut short by that event. Not all of them were situated in the western world like the Justice Guild of America and its allies. The Soviet Union had its own women and men of heroism, valour and courage. This is the story of one of them, Nebesnyy chelovek- Skyman.
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Vasili Kirilovitch was known and celebrated throughout his native Leningrad and the Soviet Union as Skyman. Like his counterpart savant in Seaboard City Tom Turbine, Vasili was a master scientist and had perfected an antigravity belt which also gave him heightened strength and partial invulnerability. His identity had been hidden by a helmet and was known only to the People's Premier, Nikita Krushchev, for if one cannot trust the leader of one's peeople, who can one trust? In return for that trust, Khrushchev kept Skyman's secret as the hero embarked on a rich and storied career using his abilities for justice, morality and the socialist path.
But on October 28, 1962, all that was in the past. Now, he met his match as he alighted on an onrushing, deadly US intercontinental ballistic missile as it hurtled toward the city of his birth. If he had known that half a world away, his counterpart Tom Turbine had come to an exactly identical decision, he might have mused on the irony if he had had time. But he had no time. Atop the missile's warhead, Vasili tore at the wires and circuitry within it, sustaining a fatal radiation dose that even his scientific prowess could not have protected him from. Still, and that is the measure of this courageous, brave and noble man, he tried to avert his city's looming fate, despite the unbearable pain that was coursing through him as he sought to thrust aside doomsday with the last of his strength.
But then, the ICBM's payload detonated and the brave Nebesnyy Chelovek, Leningrad's favourite son, its Skyman, was erased from existence in a microsecond, not even long enough for an electrical impulse to flow between neuron and synapse.
As the examples of Tom Turbine and Skyman show on both sides of that deadly and hellish night, courage, compassion and valiant self-sacrifice know no political ideology or national border. For that is the supreme test of a hero and like so many others on that evening, they both proved theirs in abundance.
THE END
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Vasili Kirilovitch was known and celebrated throughout his native Leningrad and the Soviet Union as Skyman. Like his counterpart savant in Seaboard City Tom Turbine, Vasili was a master scientist and had perfected an antigravity belt which also gave him heightened strength and partial invulnerability. His identity had been hidden by a helmet and was known only to the People's Premier, Nikita Krushchev, for if one cannot trust the leader of one's peeople, who can one trust? In return for that trust, Khrushchev kept Skyman's secret as the hero embarked on a rich and storied career using his abilities for justice, morality and the socialist path.
But on October 28, 1962, all that was in the past. Now, he met his match as he alighted on an onrushing, deadly US intercontinental ballistic missile as it hurtled toward the city of his birth. If he had known that half a world away, his counterpart Tom Turbine had come to an exactly identical decision, he might have mused on the irony if he had had time. But he had no time. Atop the missile's warhead, Vasili tore at the wires and circuitry within it, sustaining a fatal radiation dose that even his scientific prowess could not have protected him from. Still, and that is the measure of this courageous, brave and noble man, he tried to avert his city's looming fate, despite the unbearable pain that was coursing through him as he sought to thrust aside doomsday with the last of his strength.
But then, the ICBM's payload detonated and the brave Nebesnyy Chelovek, Leningrad's favourite son, its Skyman, was erased from existence in a microsecond, not even long enough for an electrical impulse to flow between neuron and synapse.
As the examples of Tom Turbine and Skyman show on both sides of that deadly and hellish night, courage, compassion and valiant self-sacrifice know no political ideology or national border. For that is the supreme test of a hero and like so many others on that evening, they both proved theirs in abundance.
THE END